Cancer scanner halves radiation

So sorry, you are not going to turn into a mutant anytime soon after undergoing a round with this cancer scanner which merges both PET (Positron Emission Tomography)and MRI into a single device, resulting in a new kind of medical technology that boasts of improved image quality and less radiation, thanks to the efforts of particle physicists at the University in Oslo . At the moment, most cancer examinations involve high levels of radiation, but this latest merged technology has been specially created to bring the best of both worlds, while reducing the amount of radiation that your body is bombarded with – which could be detrimental to your health in the long run.

According to the group of particle physicists involved in the project, “We have managed to double the sensitivity. In practice, we can take the pictures twice as fast, or only use half of the radioactive dose in order to get the same image quality as previously. Today, the scanners form a circle. This means that there is a gap between each detector block, and photons disappear through the gaps. Now, we have full coverage of crystals on all sides. We can capture several million particles a second. However, this does not happen at regular intervals. We measure each nanosecond. If we do not measure fast enough, we can get errors.”